1. Field
This disclosure relates generally to resource requirements planning, and more particularly, to a system and method for maintaining stocks of necessary supplies.
2. Background
Many businesses maintain regular stocks of consumable supplies. For example, businesses involved in mechanical manufacturing and repair may require consumable stocks of mechanical fasteners, tools and other implements, such as screws, nuts, drill bits, sockets and other related items. These supplies may be stocked in supply bins, and must be reordered periodically as the supplies are utilized in the normal course of business. Monitoring the stock of supplies is often tedious, especially for large and/or diverse stocks of supplies. For example, a supply officer would need to peruse the entire stock collection, identify which stocks are running low, record the information, contact multiple vendors, cross reference to obtain the best price on each stock item, and then place one or more orders to ensure the business is obtaining the best price overall during restocking. This process may become very inefficient when a supply officer is tasked with maintaining a stock of hundreds of diverse supply items, each sold by a dozen or more vendors.
Creating a computer-aided process that utilizes a barcode scanner for supply cataloguing and ordering would therefore be highly advantageous. However, this solution may be frustrated by the fact that customers may be reluctant to allow installation of third party software suites on their computer systems, which are often the sole reliable access to the Internet able on-site at a customer location. Therefore, while vendor agents or authorized users of vendor-issued inventory cataloguing systems may be allowed to visit the customer's facility to assess the customer's current stock of supplies, they have no reliable data connection with which to upload the information to the vendor.